by
Ralph W. Phillips
Deputy Director-General
Food and Agriculture
Organization
I am pleased to bid you welcome here, on behalf of the Director—General. It is indeed heartening to see such a distinguished group of animal geneticists assembled to consider the problems of identification, conservation and effective management of animal genetic resources. This is matter critical to man's future, yet it has had little recognition and little real attention.
In fact there are those who might argue that it needs little attention, and that -in due season - we, as animal geneticists, will be an endangered species - since there will be no room for animals on this planet, and consequently no need for scientists who are concerned with their improvement.
I do not wish to delve deeply into this argument, but let me cite four reasons why I believe there will be need for animals, and animal geneticists, not only at the turn of this century, but at the turnings of many centuries thereafter.
Much of the world's surface is grazing land, from which it is practicable to harvest a crop only through the use of livestock.
In the most densely populated areas - the developing countries - it is estimated that the agricultural population will number over two billion by the turn of this century, and that within that population the agricultural labour force will number 823 million. These people will live and work mostly on very small farms, where the chief source of power will be bullocks and other draft animals.
Whatever the farming systems followed, much of the produce of the world's farms, whether they be in the developed or the developing countries, will continue to be roughage and by-products which only livestock can transform into products suitable for human consumption.
Given the economic level that people in the developed countries hope to maintain, and to which those in the developing countries aspire, a demand for livestock products seems certain to persist.
So, as the demands placed on this planet for food supplies for a rapidly growing population increase, and also when the human race learns to contain its own urge to expand and stabilizes at some level - as it must - it is essential that man have at his disposal both the plant and the animal genetic resources with which to work to meet his needs.
As animal geneticists, I fear we must admit that this is an area in which the plant geneticists are well ahead. This is true in part because plant materials are easier and cheaper to manage. Also, the threats to plant genetic material became generally evident earlier, because of the rapid spread of improved types into centres of origin. In addition, the first major crop of plant geneticists emerged about a generation ahead of the pioneer generation of animal geneticists. So we have to run to catch up.
Our major species of farm animals were, for the most part, domesticated between six and eleven thousand years BP (before the present), and cattle, sheep, goats and hogs were domesticated mostly between eight and ten thousand years BP.
During the long period between domestication and the time when the science of genetics was developed and began to be applied in animal breeding, many genetic changes took place. Overall, those changes were probably much greater than the changes that have been achieved since man began to apply his knowledge of genetics. The rate of change was much slower, but there is evidence that some rather highly specialized animals evolved during that long pre-genetic period. Natural selection under unimproved conditions and the survival of the fittest in evolutionary time were no doubt responsible for the genetic superiority in resistance to disease and harsh climatic conditions. It was possible for adaptation to natural environmental conditions to be maintained while man was making his selection for milk yield, wool production or other traits.
Our knowledge of animal genetics evolved during a period when rapid progress was being made in many fields of scientific endeavour. Thus, as genetics began to be applied, particularly in the developed countries of the temperate zones, many other improvements in agriculture were taking place. The rate of genetic change achieved was high, and high levels of specialization were achieved in many breeds. The overall objective was to achieve not only a high output, in a high input situation (in terms of feed, management, health care, etc.,) but also to achieve increases in efficiency through more favourable input:output ratios. Production of milk, meat, eggs and wool was raised to levels that could not have been imagined at the beginning of this century. Maintenance requirements absorbed a smaller portion of feed intake, so less land was needed for unit of product. Although the overhead costs per high-producing animal tended to be high, the overhead cost per unit of output generally declined.
These rapid genetic improvements have not been achieved without paying a price. For example, improved breeds are rapidly displacing local breeds thoughout Europe. A study by Lauvergne (1975) showed that only 30 out of 115 local breeds were holding their own. At the same time, owing to intensive selection for a few production traits, the genetic base of the surviving breeds is becoming restricted. Thus, genetic variation both within and between breeds, is declining. The important character of adaptability to the natural environment is being lost, both by disappearance of locally adapted breeds and by further selecting the specialized breeds under favourable conditions of feeding, management and climate (including protection against climatic conditions through better housing, etc.) Unfortunately, the need for breeding stock suitable for less sophisticated environments is, to a large extent, being ignored.
Conversely, it can be argued that the evidence for loss of variability in selected breeds is, in fact, scanty, and that new variations may have been exposed by intense selection for high levels of production. Concurrently, the formation of new breeds, for example those formed by crossing temperate and tropical breeds for use in warmer portions of the temperate zones, may maintain the overall genetic variability within the species, although that variability is threatened by the disappearance of other breeds.
In the environmentally less-favoured portions of our globe, in particular the tropics and the marginal land areas with low rainfall or high elevations, programmes for genetic improvement of animals have received substantially less attention that in the generally favourable production areas of the temperate zones. An often used approach to the achievement of higher levels of production in these areas has been the importation of high-yielding breeding material from temperate regions. Such a breeding policy can be successful where the climate is not too severe, feed supply is adequate, and a level of management ability is available equal to the needs of the sensitive, high-producing animals involved.
There are also intermediate areas where carefully-managed temperate-zone stock, for example, highly specialized dairy cows, may produce more than local stock, although owing to lack of adaptation such stock may be slower to reproduce and have shorter life spans. . Under such conditions, a new breed from a crossbred foundation, or carrying out systematic crossing between a temperate and an indigenous breed, will normally be the most economic. But, such approaches depend on the availability of an indigenous breed having adequate qualities.
There are other vast areas in the tropics, and in marginal semi-arid and high-altitude regions, where only well-adapted indigenous breeds, or breeds that have evolved under comparable conditions, can survive and reproduce. These areas are primarily the home of sheep, goats, cattle raised for beef, camels, and in some high-altitude areas, the yak, alpaca, llama and vicuna. Clearly, stock is needed in such areas that is highly adapted to the prevailing conditions, and is productive. Attempts to use imported stock from the temperate zones has usually met with failure. So, instead of making further attempts to transplant non-adapted breeds, it would make more sense to transplant the technology of breed improvement. One cannot help but wonder how much progress might have been made in genetic improvement in these areas if, over the last half-century or so, efforts had been expended comparable to those in the temperate zones.
In the developed countries, most of the current attention continues to be on the further improvement of a few specialized breeds, or on the use of these breeds for crossbreeding programmes, although some efforts are being made to introduce and use lesser—known breeds, and to conserve remnants of breeds that are being displaced by the specialized breeds.
In developing countries — as I mentioned a moment ago — where much less attention has been given to the development of specialized breeds, and where in many cases programmes for improvement of local types have been overshadowed by programmes built around the use of often unadapted imported stock, there is urgent need to survey the situation and to build more constructive approaches to breeding, including ensuring that valuable local types are not diluted or lost. Unfortunately, breeding work in many developing countries is hampered by a shortage of animal geneticists, and by the lack of adequate organizational frameworks and financial resources.
It is most encouraging to witness the recent emergence of organizations for the conservation of disappearing breeds in a number of developed countries, and of organizations for the study of animal genetic resources in some developing countries and regions. You will be discussing these organizations under Part II of Item 4 of your Agenda.
One of the first tasks of such national and regional organizations is to document the local breeds. Inventories are needed of their numbers, distribution, main characteristics and productivity. A second step is to ensure that such unique genetic materials do not disappear before their true value is known. The work being undertaken by the Society for the Advancement of Breeding Researches in Asia and Oceania (SABRAO), could well be a model for other such conservation organizations to emulate.
The work involved is essentially world—wide in scope, and will involve action in many countries if the problem is to be coped with effectively. As the primary international organization in the field of food and agriculture, FAO is in a position to provide assistance to its Member Countries, within the limits of its programmes and resources. It is also in a unique position to play a coordinating role. Among FAO's various functions, as set out in its Constitution, five are particularly pertinent to the matters you will be considering:
all of these, of course, within the context of food and agriculture.
FAO has already carried out activities relating to animal genetic resources under all these categories, and the Organization's involvement in this work dates back to 1946. Perhaps it would be useful for many of you if I recount just a few bits of the history of that involvement. Here I will also inject a few personal notes, since there has been a certain linkage between my own and FAO's interest in the problem.
My own interest in the subject dates back just half a century, because it was in June 1930 that, as a graduate student, I began studying the adverse effects of hot summer temperatures on fertility in the ram. In fact, my Doctor's thesis carried the rather unusual title, "The Thermo-Regulatory Function and Mechanism of the Scrotum". In those days, when only a handful of Doctor's degrees was awarded at each commencement, it was customary at the University of Missouri for the title of each Doctor's thesis to be printed in the commencement programme. The title of mine no.doubt caused quite a few eyebrows to be raised. But that as it may, from this physiological base, my interests spread — over the next twelve years or so — into research on a number of the genetic and physiological aspects of adaptability to the environment.
During those years, I spent fourteen months in China and India, while on loan from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to the Department of State, serving as Adviser on Animal Breeding, to the Governments of China and India. It was during that period, in 1943, that President Roosevelt convened a Conference on Pood and Agriculture, at Hot Springs, Virginia, which set up an Interim Commission, and led to the formal establishment of FAO at the First Session of the FAO Conference, in Quebec, in October 1945. Late in 1943, a friend in the American Embassy in Chungking showed me the report of the Hot Springs Conference, and it was this chance happening that first sparked my interest in FAO.
The work in China and India also further sparked my interest in the problems of animal breeding in relation to the environment so, back in Beltsville, I prepared a manuscript on Breeding Livestock Adapted to Unfavourable Environments. FAO, which was only beginning to evolve a programme of work, expressed a desire to publish it, and it eventually appeared as FAO's Agricultural Study No. 1,
Shortly after the Quebec Conference, Divisions were established in FAO to deal with Economics, Nutrition, Fisheries and Forestry. However, the then Director-General, Sir John Orr (later Lord Boyd Orr) was so preoccupied with his ideas for a World Food Board that he had not gotten round to setting up an Agriculture Division. Governments were getting restive about this and, to reassure them that action was being taken, Sir John convened a meeting of a Standing Advisory Committee on Agriculture, in Copenhagen, just in advance of the Second Session of the FAO Conference. That was in the late summer of 1946, and I was invited to serve on the Committee. One of my contributions to its work was the drafting of a recommendation — which the Committee adopted — that FAO should undertake work on the cataloguing of animal genetic stocks.
It was during that meeting that I was invited to join the FAO staff. So, on 2 December 1946, I left the research laboratory and began my first stint in FAO as Chief of the then Animal Production Branch, which later became the Animal Production and Health Division. But I also had a second assignment, that of creating the Agriculture Division, of which the Branch was to be a part. That Division, of which I later became Deputy Director, eventually evolved - with some modifications - into the present Agriculture Department. On that cold December morning in 1946 the agricultural staff of FAO consisted of myself, a soil scientist, and two secretaries.
Since those early beginnings, quite a few constructive steps have been taken relating to the identification, conservation and management of animal genetic resources. I will mention only three series of activities, as examples.
The first of these is a series of publications which has included, among others:
- Zebu Cattle of India and Pakistan (joshi and Phillips, 1953) - Types and Breeds of African Cattle (Joshi, McLaughlin and Phillips, 1957) - European Breeds of Cattle, Volumes I and II (French, Johansson, Joshi and McLaughlin, 1966) - Sheep Breeds of the Mediterranean (Mason, 1967) -
The Husbandry and Health of the Domestic Buffalo (Edited by Cockrill, 1974)
Such books not only constituted a solid contribution to the cataloguing of animal genetic stocks; they also served to focus considerable attention on the problems of conserving and effectively using such stocks.
The second was a series of consultations on animal genetic resources. The first, in 1966, undertook an overall examination of the problem. The three subsequent consultations dealt, respectively, with cattle (in 1968), with pigs (in 1970), and with poultry (in 1973). I had the honour of chairing those consultations, which, although the participants were present in their personal capacities, were precursors to the present meeting.
The third is a project which got under way early in 1974, with financing and other support from UNEP. The activities carried out under that project have included reports on declining breeds of Mediterranean sheep and on sheep breeds in Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey, surveys of trypanotolerant livestock in West and Central Africa and of prolific tropical sheep, expert consultations on animal genetic resources in Latin America and on dairy cattle breeding in the humid tropics, an inventory of special conservation herds, and this Consultation, which is the final activity in the project. We are grateful to UNEP for its foresight and concern with these problems, and for its support, including a large share of the financing of the present Consultation. We are also grateful to the International Livestock Centre for Africa (ILCA) for its cooperation in the survey of trypanotolerant livestock that I just mentioned.
You will hear of other activities which have been or are being carried out under our Regular and Field Programmes, as the Consultation progresses.
At this point I might have injected some ideas as to how FAO's cooperation with its Member Countries, and with the various national and regional organizations that are developing programmes relating to animal genetic resources, might be strengthened. However, these are matters which may, more logically, arise in the course of your discussions.
Because of my personal interest in the subject, I am also tempted to comment further on a number of the technical matters included in your Agenda. But I shall leave that to you who are now much closer to the science of animal breeding. I will only mention that you may wish to consider if the approaches to breed improvement needed under harsh conditions are different from those that have proved successful under favourable climatic conditions and sophisticated agricultural and. economic environments. Also, you should keep in mind the need under such conditions, for innovative and less expensive methods of measuring performance. There might also be merit/in re-studying the methods whereby progress was achieved prior to the days of modern genetics, sophisticated recording systems and electronic computers.
Let me inject a final personal note. When I left the research laboratory late in 1946, I made myself a promise that, when I lost contact with my chosen subject-matter field, I would retire.
I have managed to maintain that contact although at times the connecting thread has worn quite thin. But my presence here today is evidence that it hasn't yet broken. So I am indeed pleased to have this small part in your proceedings, and to wish you a most successful Consultation.
